not agree but...

I do not agree with your view, most PHP4 frameworks are a joke in front of PHP5 frameworks, you just can 't compare them.

developers push faith in PHP5 because the simple a simple fact, PHP4 is a toy, not intended for (real object oriented programming || seriuos work), and lacks of many , many features in the area.

PHP5 adoption is a concern, however, soon or later, vendors will force people to upgrade anyway.there is no escape.

With the release of PHP6, Im not sure PHP4 will be still supported... ;-)

Sorry, there seems to be a misunderstanding. Nobody claimed anything against PHP 5 and PHP 5 based frameworks.

The truth is that 94% of the developers and hosts are not upgrading from PHP 4 now nor anytime soon.

So, for developers that have sites on hosts that do not support PHP 5, PHP 5 only frameworks are irrelevent. It does not matter how much better you claim PHP 5 based frameworks are.

There is no point on your bashing of PHP 4 based frameworks. Bashing them is unfair and does not solve the problems that prevent people from upgrading to PHP 5.

Other than that, PHP supports OOP since PHP 3. It already supported encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism . Later versions improved OOP features, but that does not invalidate the fact that PHP 3 already supported the core OOP features.

Anyway, for Web site users, it is irrelevant the version of PHP or the frameworks that the sites are using or not.

If sites keep using older PHP versions, it is because they work well for their purposes. So, older versions are being used for serious work unlike you claim.

Well... people will be forced to upgrade anyway , vendors are gradually removing PHP4 from distributions/OS's.(and old distributions/OS are reaching EOL)

with the notably exception of PEAR or other very few components, PHP5 only frameworks have much better code quality,documentation and functionality, but you are 100% right when you say that will not matter if hosts won't upgrade.


Hosts won't upgrade because backward compatibility issues, but soon or later, they will have to so, natural software lifecycle.. or you think PHP4 will be supported after the release of PHP6.x ?? I really doubt it.not even microsoft with a infinite bugdet wants to support 3 different versions of windows ...

I decided to code only for PHP5 only few months ago, and I don't regret of it, It reduced the development time costs a lot,help me to produce more secure and clean code.(with the help of certain components/frameworks, and without spending so much time creating validation routines and reinventing the wheel..) We had a "home made" framework for PHP4 (even ready for public release) however, we decided to stop developing it, a go with already invented, supported,clean,extensible an manteniable PHP5 only code.


About the PEAR comments, I agree with you, Zend do not want PHP4 code anymore due bussiness reasons,and that seems to be one of the hidden reasons why the bundled PEAR was removed for PHP6.

BTW.. If I have to pick a framework I bet for:

Zend Framework
Symphony
Prado
WASP

I am still not being very clear.

It does not matter if and when people will upgrade. What matters is that people are not upgrading now nor anytime soon.

Sites using PHP 4 now, cannot use PHP 5 only frameworks without upgrading. Even if they upgrade sometime soon, applications based on most PHP 4 frameworks or class libraries will continue to work because those frameworks are compatible with PHP 4 and PHP 5.


As for the quality of the frameworks for PHP 4 or PHP 5, quality is a relative concept, it depends on the parameters that each person use to evaluate quality. Different people use different parameters. This is not consensual.

Anyway, I think there is nothing magic on PHP 5 that bumps the frameworks quality. It depends a lot on the maturity and capabilities of the developers that developed the frameworks.

I think you are being harsh and narrow minded when you state that only PEAR classes have greater quality.

If you look at the other threads commenting this blog post, you see several people happily recommending other PHP 4 compatible frameworks. They certainly would not use them if they did not meet their quality standards.